The Death of California
As the verdict fell in support of the L.A.P.D. officers, civil unrest was inevitable. The only question was how would others respond in the climate of the 1990’s. The decade was already ripe for explosion with Chief of Police Daryl Gates reaffirming the Nixon strategy of order above all. As with other prominent men, Gates was facing the dying days of the old country. From his perspective, the outrage over his tenure was a betrayal against his forefathers. This was business as usual and no one would prefer the alternative. Gates was living by old rules that were about to be replaced by the political theology of the civil rights era. Like Bob Dylan said in his drunken stupor: “Times they are a-changin’.” or whatever the fuck.
The Chief of Police was in for a rude awakening and his city was armed with pitchforks this time.
Cultural consensus taught us that cops keep society from crumbling and detractors can complain about it on their city bus ride back home. The 60’s were buried in the past and surely another California-based revolution was not back in style, right?
That civil rights cause we conceded to was subdued! We gave those people what they wanted. Time to call a truce guys! These are the words of defeat. The department will save face at all costs, even if that means firing its best people.
Most are vaguely aware of the details. Police business became everyone else’s business. The gullible public sees a video that makes them feel things. The city gets ransacked. Sound familiar? Yeah yeah ok.
That’s what started 30 years ago today. One of many riots in a long lineage of American decline.
The way to handle this in the glory days? Pat Buchanan advised Nixon that demonstrations can’t reach the proportions we tolerate today. Not just for optics sake, these are the signs of a nation in peril. Gates and his playbook rightfully fit in previous decades. In the 90’s, peer pressure and violence won over protocol. Yet, that wasn’t all that happened.
When all hope seemed lost, someone brought the disaster to a roaring conclusion with President H.W. Bush declaring the city a warzone effectively. The National Guard swooped in and the week of anarchy ended in early May. Today, this would be abnormal. A custom many of us have become desensitized to is seeing order and authority take any priority over the mob’s senseless demands.
Ironically, the man who would be defined, in partisan terms, by his rigorous law and order standard would soon pass away along with his version of California. The state President Nixon grew up in and saw reach its peak had died right when the new revolution was beginning to escalate.
The new precedent set by civil rights war fever allowed American democracy to reveal itself in its totality. The minority got to hold the majority hostage and the media ran cover for the former while ignoring the latter. California’s demographics was also reaching mainstream consciousness. So much so, we even get to see Con Inc. shills remind us how based Koreatown is. Wait a second…
What exactly are they saying? Koreans self-segregate out of security purposes among others. They are willing to arm themselves against rival groups. And that’s cool? America, in its presumably boring decade, was dividing itself up into Brazilian style enclaves that are ready to fight each other at a moment’s notice? It’s cool that we have men on rooftops protecting their hyphenated Americans against other hyphenated Americans?
Not good enough.
The California that gave birth to Haight-Ashbury hippies and their racial sympathies was entering another stage of perpetual war. Grievances used to rewrite the law? That’s 60’s/ Grievances used to DISARM the law? That’s 90’s.
H.W. Bush, warts and all, still had a semblance of the pre-60’s revolution era of America. He was not going to let it slip under the guise of “Let their voice be heard, whydontcha?!” Whether the decision was for the right reason or not, it set a standard for what could be done in the age of anarchy.
What was once the safe haven of a bygone era has deteriorated into the decadent concrete jungle we know today. However, there is hope.
California is a sunken, not sinking, ship. It’s unignorable how much the standard of living has fallen. The residents, myself included, can still have some of that sanity back. As a young guy, the boomers don’t want to hear from me. So, let me cite someone else’s testimony.
“Until recently, much of the history of the conservative movement has focused largely on the conservative intellectuals and writers, while ignoring the importance of grassroots conservatism. Those histories portrayed a small group of writers and intellectuals, articulating an antistatist philosophy that deeply resonated with the republican tradition in America-its distrust of centralized government and political elites, and its fear of corruption.”
“The postwar Republican Right finds that the foundation of the Republican Right was laid in grassroots anticommunism that paralleled the development of an intellectual movement that sought to educate the general public, especially young people, about the principles of conservatism. At the same time, grassroots anticommunist organizations in the late 1950s educated large numbers of Americans through hundreds of often obscure publications, local seminars, lectures, film strips, study groups, and educational campaigns. Radio programs such as the Dan Smoot Report and the Manion Forum reached tens of thousands of listeners, while Dr. Fred C. Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communism Crusade organized training schools and rallies that attracted thousands of participants. These grassroots anticommunist activities were often conducted through local groups and organizations that were tied together only by their cause and by national speakers and writers who attended local events.”
Running for office just because you can has been the California playbook for years. I’ve talked to these guys and they don’t know how behind they are. Localism comes first and then you run for office, after setting infrastructure to have a viable chance at victory.
Credit to: Donald T. Critchlow (Author/New York Times)